IT was a small albeit a significant gesture by those who took out a procession at the historic Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to express their solidarity with the people of Pakistan in their hour of challenge from terrorists.

It is a coincidence that thousands of people demonstrated on the same day at the Mall in Lahore to warn terrorists, some of whom had attacked a police academy.

In both countries the message was that the people would not allow bombs and bullets to defeat freedom and fraternity. Without any arms or security the participants of the demonstrations have made it clear that determined people are a far bigger force than all the gun-toting fundamentalists put together.

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Basharat Peer’s ‘Curfewed Nights’ brings home the myriad nuances and human-ness of ‘the Kashmir issue’ – the main reason why, we are told, Pakistan and India can’t exist in peace.

Despite the hostilities, it speaks for the changing times that Peer was able to recently visit Pakistan, staying with Saad Haroon, a satirist he had met in New York (got the visa because a Pakistani diplomat liked his book). Friends hooked him up with Sabeen Mahmud who runs The Second Floor, T2F, the internet café-cum-community space in Karachi where you can hang out over music or a board game, browse the bookshelves or imbibe the art work and mural on the brick walls. Despite the short notice, the place was packed – with mostly young people, like Peer, Mahmud, and Haroon themselves. The event provided a rare opportunity for meaningful interaction without the public posturing, ‘national’ positions and one-upmanship that the mainstream media reflects and reinforces, overwhelming the shades of grey.

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